Chicago’s Environmental Systems Design has won our third Creative Adoption of Newforma “CAN Do” award. We appreciate ESD’s can-do attitude towards driving Newforma Project Center usage across every aspect of their business. We admire their approach so much, in fact, that we adopted aspects of it for Newforma’s training program.
Vice President of IT Mark Andersen and his team developed short monthly training sessions on each Newforma Project Center activity center, one piece at a time. By keeping the sessions focused and short, they were able to drive usage deep within each activity center. I liked this idea so much I adopted it as our underlying training philosophy.
Project Files usage streamlines workflow as it makes IT administration easier
One area of high usage that separates ESD from the majority of other Newforma customers is their use of the Project Files activity center. Using the Project Files activity center masks the complexity of file servers and spares users from having to think about which servers their projects reside on.
The fact that folks would find files via the Project Files activity center made life much easier when Mark’s team had to move projects from one server to another for load balancing purposes. Before Newforma Project Center, folks would have to learn where their projects went, but with Newforma Project Center, most of the time users did not even know their projects had moved.
Mark admits that Windows Explorer works just fine for people managing one or two projects. He appreciates that Newforma Project Center does not require they use the Project Files activity center over Windows Explorer. But when folks are working on multiple projects, they save time and avoid frustration when they don’t need to know which file server has their project files.
The Action Items activity center adapts to internal reviews
ESD is very creative in using the Action Items activity center to drive their personnel review process. They create an Action Item for each employee, setting the due date in the Action Item as the review date. They attach review documentation to the Action Item as supporting documentation. Reviewers mark completed reviews as completed action items. HR runs reports to see who has and who has not finished their reviews, allowing HR to stay on top of this important internal process.
Share your story
Would you like to share your CAN Do story with Newforma? We will be awarding new CAN Do certificates for the most creative method you share with us and allow us to share with the rest of the Newformant community. Email us at .
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